Initially titled The Sea (海, Umi) in an early draft Dazai shared with friends,[1] the work was first published[2] in the short-lived coterie journal Nihon romanha [ja] and has been described as a "major contribution" to the magazine.
In late December, the day after a suicide pact, twenty-something artist Ōba Yōzō awakens at a seaside sanatorium for tuberculosis patients and finds his lover Sono did not survive.
Mano tells Yōzō and Kosuge a ghost story about seeing a phantom crab while keeping vigil with a dead patient.
On the fourth day, the sanatorium director gives Yōzō a clean bill of health and directs Mano to remove his bandages.
"[8] Author and critic Takako Takahashi, who cites Dazai as an influence,[9] has dismissed as "unmanly" and "gratuitous" the asides in which the writer-narrator bemoans the quality of the story he is writing.
[10] Others have applauded Dazai as a "violator of conventions," noting how the narrator of The Flowers of Buffoonery "intrudes in the novel and comments on the autobiographical plot, exposing the fact that it is fictional.
"[7] It has been argued that this ironic handling of the story highlights "the complex and perhaps ridiculous nature of autobiographical fiction" and that "this playful self-mockery exonerates the often despairing tone of Dazai's works, while also making them more effective as autobiography"[5] The story has been described as a comment on the futility of taking one's own life, with some critics suggesting that Dazai's "focus on the comical, embarrassing, and grotesque aspects" of suicide make the prospect of killing oneself appear as "meaningless, bleak and absurd as life itself.
"[11] In the September 1935 issue of Bungei Shunjū, novelist Yasunari Kawabata offered a critical appraisal of the novella, writing that the work "embodies the lifestyle and literary perspectives of its maker, though in my personal opinion, a dark cloud surrounds the author that regrettably prevents a full expression of his talents.